– Hmm," Ruthra looked around.
The surroundings were the same, or almost the same. And then he caught himself thinking… "It was exactly the same situation last time, and not just exactly the same, but… everything was almost exactly the same: the situation, and the Bedouin, but the dialog… The dialog was not the same. Could it be… deja vu?" – Ruthra thought. What the stranger said almost made him stutter.
– Agree, if you were transported to an unfamiliar place, to an unfamiliar country, to an unfamiliar society and environment while sleepy or in a coma state, say unconsciousness, you would have the same state of distrust of reality.
– Why are you repeating my thoughts all of a sudden? – Ruthra remembered that it had occurred to him to say the same thing last time.
– That's what you think," was the reply from the interlocutor, the same as last time.
– First of all, I haven't interacted with anyone here yet, except for you here, I see the same environment as I have a few times before, and....
"And I thought I answered the same way that time," Ruthra thought, "or…? Maybe there was no last time? Hell, no, there was…"
He was distracted from his thoughts by otherworldly noises. He turned, noticing the anxious, intense, beastly look of horror in his companion's eyes.
– So much for politicians," the rabbi's voice sounded depressed, just like last time.
"A master of the stage," Ruthra thought, only his doubts grew stronger.
And, trying again to tear his gaze away from the madness in the Jew's eyes, he looked at the scorched branding – the six-pointed star (magendavid) looked a little different, bigger and… it was a real scar from the scorched branding. Ruthra, feeling unconsciously anxious, turned around. What he saw gave him an answer, but it was from a different area, though Ruthra still doubted whether it was the right one: the same horde of Selekwid warriors were coming at them. He wasn't surprised by the director's idea, but the horror in his gaze… something instinctive… that spoke of reality.
"It's all very real," Ruthra reasoned with himself, "but it's still a production. Or…"
Everything repeated itself: a group of men approached the oasis with shouts and yells, pursued by another group, mostly horsemen.
Apparently our brains have senses other than sight and hearing, which were necessary to understand what we were seeing, so with some sixth sense Ruthra realized the reality of what was happening. Doubts or belief in the scene already played out remained, even when the riders caught up with the pursuers at the tree. Doubts remained even as scarlet hot blood hissed from the severed necks. Doubts still remained when the screams, the cries of the dying began to fade. Doubts remained when the mahaira, a variant of the xiphos, a short light sword for horsemen, glittered over the rabbi who had convinced him. Doubts remained when the rabbi was not quite a rabbi, for he drew his sicarius and fended off the blows of three opponents one after another.
"Sicarius," Ruthra said excitedly to himself, "he is a sicarius4 . The short curved sword of the sica no doubt speaks volumes." This public, though from the pages of historiography, Rutra knew well. Knew, too, that "sicri" was the Latin nickname for secret assassins. It was not for nothing that the term had become entrenched in the vocabulary of the Latins as something derived from the word for assassin – sicarius in Latin. "And yet what is going on around here?" – Rutra wondered. Shrieks, screams, howls, cries, distraught moans, the wheeze of air escaping from their lungs through the shards of severed necks… it all sounded from one side or the other. And yet Ruthra still had doubts about the reality of what was happening. But suddenly those doubts were dispelled by the cold blade of a heavy akinak.
